Some may call it the Asian Ladybug or Asian Lady Beetle, but I prefer to think of these "women" as the crack-whores of ladybug society. Or, judging by the way they fly around in hyperactive circles bumping into lights, they might more accurately be described as the methamphetamine-whores of ladybug society.

Unfortunately, we haven't yet taken the air conditioners out of their respective windows, so that's where the beetles are coming in. During the day, they stay on the windows because that's where the light is, but at night, the few that have gotten past the curtain start flitting around the overhead light, knocking into it with a tick tick tick for a few seconds until they take a rest on the ceilng. Or rather, since the light has a metal shade, it's more of a ting ting ting. I'd much prefer silence silence silence. Or even death death death.

Lately I've been lighting a vanilla candle every evening in my bedroom, because I really like the scent and it placebically relieves stress and cures headaches. It's one of those little $2.00 Walgreen's candles that comes in its own frosted glass container. Well, tonight, one of the Asian Ladybugs flew near my vanilla candle, which gave me an idea.

The next thing I knew, the candle was mysteriously floating through the air, toward the other ladybugs, with a sound of sizzle sizzle sizzle. What was even more mysterious was that the floating candle was attached to my hand.

I got a perverse pleasure out of walking around the room, standing on the bed and balancing on chairs to lift the flame to all five of the damned beetlewhores until all of them had been dazed by the heat and plummeted to their fiery, waxy vanilla death. The procedure was quite simple: all I had to do was hold the flame near the beetle for a few seconds, and it would fall into the candle. Some of them drowned in the luscious liquid lava, while others needed a little more convincing (i.e. scorching) before they'd give in.

All the while I realized, of course, that if I stumbled and fell and dropped the candle and burned the house down, I'd make it onto the evening news, or at least into a Dave Barry column. Nevertheless, I completed my mission for humanity, and blew out the candle as I made a wish that the other 23,948,395 beetles fiendishly sleeping on the window would be dead by tomorrow morning. The finale to Beethoven's Ninth Symphony played in my head as I poured the beetle-laden wax into the garbage can.

(And wiped the two stubborn carcasses out with a paper tissue.)

I looked at the clock: only five minutes had passed. But now, instead of a ting ting ting, it was a tap tap tap as I relayed my adventure to a friend via Instant Messenger. I relit the candle to rid the room of the burning ladybug odor, and I was soon deluged in the Tylenol-obsolescing vanilla-sugar redolence of the Asian Ladybug Death Machine.

Hmm, what's that I hear? Sounded like a ting to me. In the time it took me to write this, another methwhorebeetle found its way to the overhead light. Time to get out the matches...